


Patch my dyad

by Scoby



Series: Reylo experiments [7]
Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Angst, Angst and Fluff and Smut, Appropriate Use of the Force, Ben Solo is a Mess, Body Image, Canon Universe, Doggy Style, Established Relationship, Explaining sexual fantasy to a droid without an empathy circuit, F/M, Fluff, Food Sex, Force Dyad (Star Wars), Force Photoshop, Foreplay, Love, Minor Finn/Rose Tico, Mismatched Libidos, Oral Sex, Pillow Fights, Post-Canon, Post-Canon Fix-It, Redeemed Ben Solo, Relationship Issues, Rey Needs A Hug, Reylo dependent on their household droid, Reylo hopeless in the kitchen, Sexual Frustration, Sexual trauma from shaming, Smut, Vaginal Sex, Wordcount: 10.000-30.000, Working Out My Feelings Through Fic, and not only for chores, food as a metaphor for sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-29
Updated: 2020-09-04
Packaged: 2021-03-06 07:21:24
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 13,105
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25899616
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Scoby/pseuds/Scoby
Summary: A year into a relationship with Rey, Ben has to come to terms with all the sexual shame piled up as a result of Snoke's teachings.-----“That’s what all the young couples say: ‘We’ve got each other, we don’t need a droid to talk to.’ But let me tell you, these empathy circuits prevent thousands of divorces and breakups every year. When the going gets rough, a properly empathic household droid may be just what is needed to smoothen out the edges so that the couple can talk through their issues in a civilized manner. I know you’re all in love now and all of that seems like an absurdity, but I would recommend…”They confirmed that their answer was no. Maybe empathy circuits were worth their price for normal couples, but they were a freaking dyad in the Force, who could enter each other’s minds if it came down to it.“If you ever change your mind and want to install it later, you know where to find me.”
Relationships: Rey/Ben Solo, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Series: Reylo experiments [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1872295
Comments: 4
Kudos: 43





	1. End of silence

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Do you want to be just friends?”

“It looks like Edlanyn cannot sense the sting beams when they approach her head from the left.” Ben’s index finger taps thoughtfully at the side of his glass.

“Sounds like unresolved issues with her mother. We’ll get to it soon.” Rey’s mouth is still half full as she chews and speaks at the same time.

“Might get painful...”

“She’ll figure it out. She’s strong with the Force. And we’ll help her.”

Rey swallows her last bite and pushes her plate back.

“Thank you, Nate”, she nods at their kitchen droid who picks up their dishes.

“I made jogan fruit tart for dessert, with the crust on top just as you like it, Master Ben.”

“Thank you, Nate, but I’ll skip it this time.” Ben smiles at the droid but it still hunches its oval head slightly downwards in disappointment.

“Are you sure? This is delicious, Nate!”

Rey already has her mouth full. She does not care if the crust is on top or bottom. N8-09, whom they call N8 or just Nate, is an excellent baker and it gets any dessert to develop a perfect consistency and taste amazing. Rey’s compliments lift the droid’s moods and it already holds its head high when getting started with the dishes. But Ben is stubborn, just like he has been for... she does not even remember exactly when was the last time he ate dessert, or any food in an uncalculated amount.

“Yes, I am. I’ll have it diluted.”

With that he means that he watches Rey eat and stops her a couple of times between bites to kiss her.

Before swallowing the final mouthful, she rolls her tongue around in the crunchy pieces of crust mixed with the warm juicy stuffing, spreading the sweet taste of jogan everywhere in her mouth. When she is content and has swallowed most her mouth empty, she straddles Ben’s thighs and sits in his lap to give him a final, less diluted taste.

He breathes out delightful, purr-like sounds as his tongue keeps venturing deeper into her mouth. Rey mirrors first how he holds her lower back with the other hand and neck with the other. Then she lets her hand travel upward to feel around his back, then his side and chest, and then down his belly. She continues all they way down until she reaches between his legs, where she stops to give a tentative squeeze.

That makes him tense. He keeps on kissing her, though more softly, as he grabs her wrist and moves her hand upwards and guides it back around his back – a move that has become all too familiar for Rey.

She savours few more moments of kissing and then leans into a hug against his chest with her chin on his shoulder, head against the side of his neck. That is how she comforts herself in the closeness of his body as she swallows her disappointment.

More than a year has passed since Ben’s prison sentence was reduced to a parole. It was a pure blessing compared to the months he had spent locked up, allowed only brief visiting hours here and there. The only conditions were that he has to stay in the Outer Rim, is not allowed weapons, has to report to an officer at regular intervals and is obliged to work for the New Republic.

They do not mind living in the Outer Rim. It is far from Rey’s friends, but they still have visited a couple of times and keep comming once in a while. Especially Finn and Rose have started to show increasing forgiveness and even friendliness towards Ben. The reporting duties and ban for weapons do not bother him either. And to top it all, Rey convinced the New Republic administration that the best way to use Ben’s skills in the rebuilding of the galaxy would be to have him work on training a new generation of Jedi with her.

As soon as Ben was out of the prison and all of their dreams about to finally come true, they jumped on the Falcon, set course for the Outer Rim, and got drunk on each other. As they unhurriedly looked for a place where to set up a home and a Jedi academy, their days were filled with feverish sex on varying planets, and even more of it on the Falcon in between, when there was nothing else to do but wait for the next destination, drowned into endless lust and exploration.

But when they settled down, gathered a group of students from around the galaxy and developed a daily routine of morning and afternoon lessons broken up by meals and finishing with the two of them analysing the progress and preparing for the next day, something between them changed. Rey still has no idea what, and it is making her feel increasingly useless and frustrated.

She has tried to clumsily ask Ben about it, but he has only said that he does not know either. They are the strongest Force-users alive, who have no problem lifting rocks without touching but who cannot figure out a relationship as anything more than roommates.

She gives a final kiss on Ben’s cheek and stands up to go to sleep. N8 waves an enthusiastic good night wish at them as they leave it with the rest of the dishes. It has highly specialised sensors for air-borne chemicals and flavours needed for its cooking work, along with basic empathy functions for interpreting humans’ reactions to eating, but its range does not cover the unspoken human emotions and the silently tense atmosphere that were just filling the room.

* * *

Ben is already out of bed when Rey wakes up, as typical. She can hear from the living room his heavy breathing, which she knows to be a product of a morning routine with a countless amount of push-ups. Soon after, she hears the shower turn on for a while, and then a towel-wrapped Ben appears back in the bedroom. He leans down over the bed to kiss Rey good morning and then opens the wardrobe to look for clothes. He has got pants on and is choosing between two shirts when he looks back at her.

“Do you have to watch like that?” he asks.

“No, but I like to.”

She pushes the covers away, stands up and walks up to him to run her hand across his shoulder and chest before those will disappear inside whichever shirt he chooses.

“You used to have nothing against me looking at you like this.”

“That was when I was in Kylo Ren shape.”

“Who cares? You’re not him anymore. I like you in this shape.”

She squeezes his triceps that is extra firm from just working out. It is true that he is not as bulked up anymore. When Rey saw his naked upper body for the first time, she thought that something about the Force made him look wider than he could possibly be. Nowadays he looks more like a normal person - just moderately ripped, and Rey loves it. She thinks she would be crazy about him in any shape. Sometimes she imagines them together after decades, when his skin is all wrinkled and hair greyed, and even that turns her on.

“Don’t pinch my fat.” He looks down in visible discomfort at Rey’s hand around his upper arm.

“Ben, this is muscle I’m pinching.”

She laughs, slaps his arm and reaches behind his neck to pull him into a kiss.

“But ok, I don’t mind closing my eyes again”, she says lazily, nuzzling her nose against his.

Then she jumps back to the bed and lets him finish dressing up without looking. As soon as he is done and relaxed again, he snuggles in behind her, enclosing her into a cosy and warm embrace. They drowse off shortly, until N8 knocks on the door frame to announce that caf is ready.

* * *

“You did great with Edlanyn yesterday. That was intense.”

“Thanks. And thanks for taking care of the rest of the class. Looked like Temiri and Tho-Jer had a hard time, too.”

“They all did it, in the end. We can get back to the sting beams next week.”

She buries her head into the space between his chin and collarbones, and they drift off to sleep again. Their students have a day off, and they have been spending the whole morning altering between snoozing and waking, sometimes chatting, sometimes stroking each other’s hair or just lying down to enjoy the closeness.

When Rey wakes up next time, Ben has fallen on his back and she is breathing against his arm. She brings her fingertips to his skin and softly trails them around amidst the faint hair in his forearm. When she tugs up his shirt to continue on his belly, he wakes up and purrs. She smiles and widens her range, enjoying the texture of his nipples and the skin of his chest as far as she can reach under the shirt.

She decides to go as gentle as she can this time. When his breathing seems steady and pleasant, she slowly glides her fingertips lower, until her hand escapes from under his shirt and ends up over his pants. She first strokes the space in front of his closer hip. It makes him momentarily tense but soon relax into it. After a while, she develops the confidence to move forward, to his centre, where she finds him mildly hard as usual in the mornings. A couple of strokes with her fingertips reward her with a satisfying twitch.

That is all she has time for before he turns, first to his side away from her, then all the way to his front, leaving his ass under her hand. She strokes it a few times before settling her palm on his lower back.

This is the end of her patience to keep silent. No matter how terrified of the answer she is, she draws in a slow breath to finally ask aloud:

“Do you want to be just friends?”

“No.” He turns to his side to look at her. “Or maybe, I really don’t know… It’s like I want to want so much more with you, even though I don’t want it right now.”

“Ok, I get it. I want to respect that and give you time. But then you really need explain me what this is. Why can’t I touch you anymore? And how long may I need to wait?”

“It’s like I’ve said. I have no idea. When you touch me in that way, everything in me starts screaming for you to stop, and I have no explanation for it, and no plan for how to get over it."

“Well, you’ve been ‘over it’ before, haven’t you? What did you do in the beginning to not repel me like that?”

“Nothing, honestly. I didn’t need to. I guess it was so overwhelming just to be alive and free and with you. But now those things are familiar and it's all... different. I’m still drawn to you, like a magnet would to an opposite pole, but when too close, it's like somebody would suddenly turn the magnet around so that the matching poles face instead.”

Rey nods slowly. His description sounds exactly what she has been observing. He looks at her with the eyes of a wounded animal ready to surrender to a blow it has been expecting though wanting to postpone as long as possible.

“Is that it? Are you done with me? I get it if you…”

“I’m nowhere close to done with you, Ben Solo. As long as you want to want more, even if you just want to want to want more, I want to help. I want to understand.”

“If it helps you understand, you can look in my mind. But you’ll just see it’s really quite blank about this.”

“No, I won’t look, unless I really have to. Just like we agreed from the beginning, let’s try to talk first. How about I try to guess and you say if I hit any close?”

“You’re welcome to. I’m out of my own guesses.”

Her first guess arrives to her easily. She knows that she looks different. N8’s food, which never comes from a vacuum bag, has given her something that could be interpreted as curves, or at least a bit fewer bones sticking out, and a regular cycle for the first time in her life. She has mostly been happy about it, and Ben has said a couple of times that he likes it and called her beautiful.

She whole-heartedly wanted to believe him, but it has been getting difficult when being so deprived of his visible desire. Her nipples used to have his lips around them daily, when they still were part of her nearly flat scavenger chest. Now that she would have actual small breasts, those have hardly known his touch.

“Did you prefer me in scavenger shape?”

He instantly strokes the faint curve of her side and hip and hurries to answer:

“No, babe, how did you even think so? You’re the hottest thing in the galaxy, just like you've always been. Please please please don’t let this make you believe anything else about yourself.”

Rey sighs, partly out of relief, partly out of frustration.

“I would want to believe you. It has just been a bit hard when not having any… demonstration of it. Not even your words.”

“Oh yes, sorry, I’ve screwed up by not saying anything… I should have, but…”

“But what?”

“Last time I said you were beautiful, you had your hands inside my pants just a bit after, and there was that weird repellence again. I really love watching you, every day. I guess it’s some instinct of protecting myself by not saying it aloud. I’m sorry, it was not what you deserved. You’re gorgeous, Rey. Do you believe me?”

He holds her gaze until she has to say:

“I believe you. Just please, let me know next time as you’re thinking about it. If it helps you, I can promise that I won’t react to it in any way for now. I just so much love hearing you say it.”

“Ok, I can do that, beautiful.”

He kisses her forehead and adjusts his head to look more easily into her eyes. It sheds some of the frustration off her and makes her smile.

“Another guess then: is it related to the way you count everything you eat and seem obsessed with working out? I mean… Of course you’re welcome to, if it makes you happy. But that’s what I’ve been wanting to ask you. Are you happy, Ben?”

He turns to stare at the ceiling without answering. She gives him time, but when still no words come out of him, something about the look on his face brings to her mind another guess:

“Did Snoke or Luke ever… tell you something… about your body?”

Still no answer. His expression only grows even more distant and grim. Rey feels tears building up but strives to stay strong for him, because they are obviously approaching a difficult subject.

“Ben, please talk! You don’t have to get everything right. You can stumble and start over as many times as you need. Just speak, we’re done with the silence about this.”

After a deep breath, he starts, eyes still at the ceiling:

“Well, Luke certainly not, quite the opposite. For him, it was like people only exist from neck up, or maybe from heart up. All else was something to bypass or transcend to connect to the Force. So he was pretty neutral about how we lived in his academy.”

Rey nods slowly. She followed Luke’s teaching for a lot shorter time than him, but his description more or less matches her impression.

“Snoke was different. He had rules for what I could eat. And he would certainly comment any time I would gain fat or lose muscle. And… And…”

“Yes? Say it.”

“He would do this thing… You know he had access to my mind any time. Well, but he didn’t always make himself observable to me. He could come and go without me even noticing. But he would… Whenever I… touched myself, he would make his presence very loud in my mind. I grew really ashamed of it very soon.”

“That’s sick of him! And is that what you still feel when I touch you? Why didn’t you tell me anything?”

“I so much wanted to forget that I did. But now that you ask and I remember, yeah, there’s something similar about how you make me feel.”

Rey also shifts to face the ceiling and they both lie in silence in their own thoughts. After a while, she takes his hand in hers and turns her head to look at him.

“Thanks for telling me, babe. Really, thank you. I couldn’t have gone much longer without knowing anything. Now it’s just… Is there anything, anything I could do to help?”

Now the tears fall from the corners of her eyes down on her pillow. He catches them with a gentle finger.

“I can imagine one thing but I’m not sure if you’d like it.”

“I’ll do anything, anything.”

“I could use some distance from your hands. You see, sometimes I feel like I want you again, but then it falls apart with your touch. I think I could make it a bit further if it’s in my pace. Sure all the normal touch is ok, but if you can hold back anything sexual for the time being, that could help.”

Rey swallows hard but nods in agreement. Inside her mind, she cannot help thinking that this might be just what drifts them permanently into being just friends.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Plenty of my own experience in this fic. For example: I thought first that the shirtless scene in TLJ was photoshopped. When I noticed that there are YouTube videos about how to get Kylo Ren's look, I first thought they were Photoshop tutorials for how to make a person look wider. It took some time to realize that those are actually workout videos... But this made me think that Rey might believe in Force Photoshop.
> 
> Next up, Rey will fall deeper into angst but also find somebody unexpected to talk to.


	2. End of ugly plates

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Do you know how a human would feel if they had a food they really really love, and their droid would refuse to make it?”

“I’ll bring the speeder parts, soap, spray-bandage and Nate’s oil. Anything else?”

“Perhaps some oil for yourself? I heard your knee pop yesterday…”

“It didn’t pop.”

“Yes, it did!” Rey screams and runs from Ben’s extended arms.

He follows her with menacing steps to the bedroom where she tries to take cover behind the bed while continuing to escalate the tussle:

“I heard it pop. You need some oil. I’m sure I heard…”

“I’ll show you pop.”

Before he catches her, she grabs a pillow and blocks his hands with it. He uses the Force to call to his hand the pillow from the other side of the bed and strikes it at her in a large swing. She blocks again with her own pillow and attacks fiercely, forcing him to retreat almost back to the door before he can get the upper hand again. He fights her back to the edge of the bed. Before she hits it, she plants her feet on the floor and pushes with her pillow against his. He pushes back with equal force and they stay frozen in place.

Rey’s heartbeat quickens when she recalls how this ended last time. She thinks they were in a hotel on Batuu but does not remember for certain. The hotel room had much fluffier pillows. Rey needed two hands to wield one, but Ben could fit his single hand around the full corner of one – in a similar reverse grip as he used to like to hold a lightsaber. The fight ended in an orgasm she still remembers in detail.

But now she cannot use the same move she used in this situation last time - not after what she promised. Quickly, she releases her push by jumping up and landing on the bed after a backflip. With a rapid swing, her pillow hits his side. But as soon as it does, he already has his pillow out of his hands and bends forward to grab her by the waist. Easily, he flips a giggling Rey around once, throws her down on the bed, locks her hands over her head with a firm grip of her wrists and straddles her on all fours.

He leans down to kiss her. It is the kind of kiss that drives her crazy, one that is more like eating her alive. Without Ben’s grip of her wrists, she is not sure if she could keep her promise of keeping her hands off him. She already struggles to prevent her legs from wrapping around his waist and pulling his weight down on her.

Ben switches both her wrists under his one hand and uses the other one to trace down her arm. Once he reaches her shoulder, he slows down but continues over her breast. He stops there to make gentle circles and presses a few times tentatively in the middle.

Already that makes Rey softly moan. She is so starved of this that her whole mind screams: ‘Under my shirt, please go under my shirt immediately!’ But as they have agreed, she lets him finish where he wants to, and it happens to be right here. He gives her breast a final mellow squeeze and her mouth a final swirl with his tongue, lets her hands free and turns to sit next to her.

“I’ll see you in the evening, gorgeous.”

He strokes the bridge of her nose with his finger before he stands up and walks to the door, glancing briefly back as Rey waves at him.

“Bye, sweetheart, see you!”

When she hears the outdoor hiss shut, her mind goes straight back to Batuu as her hands strip down her pants.

During the day, they had checked out a few houses on sale.

She slides a hand down her side to cup her ass, following a similar trail as Ben had used when the real estate agent was not looking.

There was nothing wrong with the houses in principle, but the neighbourhoods had been way too shady to even think about a Jedi academy in the vicinity. One of the houses had a living room wall painted in burned orange and army green.

She takes off her shirt and pinches her nipple, recalling how Ben pinched his mouth in front of that wall.

In the evening at the hotel, Rey mentioned that the wall was her favourite thing about that house. Ben snapped back that if they would ever move into a house with that kind of wall, it would be the first thing to be painted over.

She grabs both her breasts into a tight squeeze, just like he crushed the sofa armrest when just thinking about that colour combination.

That escalated quickly into a juicy argument, which made them discover that even though weapons were forbidden for Ben, he was allowed to fight Rey with a pillow.

Her hands travel along her arms, legs and sides, everywhere he hit her with the fluffy weapon.

After a multitude of strikes, some blocked, some not, they ended up in the position with raised pillows pressed against each other, both pushing with equal force to try to force the other one to retreat with no success.

She steadies her hand on her mound and presses into the underlying wetness.

With a quick move, she dropped her pillow and dove down so that he briefly lost his balance and she got a hold of his hips. Before he could prepare for a new strike, she pulled down his pants and grabbed his dick with the reverse grip.

She slips two fingers inside her and circulates them around her walls.

“Where did you learn that from?”

She squeezed him harder as a punishment for making her laugh. It was like his dick was pushing back by getting larger and harder.

Her fingers rub her front wall with increasing ferocity, which causes progressively louder moans to escape her mouth.

She pushed him down to sit on the sofa, threw off her own clothes and climbed on him.

Her whole being focuses on remembering every detail of the sensation of taking him in slowly, until she reached his hips and felt so full that she could be ecstatically split in half. She squeals his name into the quiet house.

He whispered to her how beautiful she is, how much he loves her, how quickly and how hard he is going to come because of her, before his mouth got too búsy with her nipples to speak.

She eases her fingers out of her and strokes up along her labia a few times, settling on her clit and starting to press rhythmically with progressively increasing force.

His fingertips dug into the flesh of her ass as he moved her up and down along his length. She sneaked a finger to the same spot where it is now. That combined with Ben’s intensifying moans pushed her over the edge, and she came screaming, just like she comes now.

Then she clung to Ben, staying cradled in his arms and filling his ear with kisses and whispers of how much she loves him. Now she rolls to her side and tries to wrap her own arms around her.

It only makes her cry. She alternates sobbing out her sorrow and roaring in anger and frustration, wetting her pillow with tears and punching and beating it with all her power. When her tears come to an end and her throat is sore, she lies down panting, her still naked body starting to cool down.

She is startled by a knock on the door frame.

“Master Rey, is everything alright?”

“Errr… Yeah.”

“I just want you to know that if there's anything, you can always talk to me. There are several human emotions I understand.”

Rey smiles at N8’s adorable self-confidence. When they bought it, the retailer asked if they would like to purchase an additional empathy circuit. They looked at each other, chuckled and said no. They thought that the retailer was just an enthusiastic salesman when he continued:

“That’s what all the young couples say: ‘We’ve got each other, we don’t need a droid to talk to.’ But let me tell you, these empathy circuits prevent thousands of divorces and breakups every year. When the going gets rough, a properly empathic household droid may be just what is needed to smoothen out the edges so that the couple can talk through their issues in a civilized manner. Just the other day, an old client of mine told me how they had used their N8 unit to mediate their fiery divorce instead of getting a lawyer. They saved a great deal of credits and in the end, they came to the conclusion that they didn't want to divorce after all. So I know you’re all in love now and all of that seems like an absurdity, but I would recommend…”

They confirmed that their answer was no. Maybe empathy circuits were worth their price for normal couples, but they were a freaking dyad in the Force, who could enter each other’s minds if it came down to it.

“If you ever change your mind and want to install it later, you know where to find me.”

Now, Rey could certainly use an empathic droid. She has considered comming Finn or Rose or both, just to be able to shed her heart out to somebody who would understand. But then she heard that they have another baby on the way. For sure, they have none of the similar problems and would not understand. But N8 is partly right. It has the basic empathy functions needed for its job.

“Will you make me that infusion?”

“Of course, Master.”

Rey dresses up and sits down by the kitchen table. N8 sets in front of her a steaming cup smelling of its signature blend of herbs. Normally, the droid would back away to continue its chores while she would drink. Now, it stays next to the table, optical sensors aimed at its Master. She thinks about how to start so that it would understand.

“Do you know how a human would feel if they had a food they really really love, and their droid would refuse to make it?”

“Of course. That’s why I always make what my Masters love and exactly how they love it. Or is there… If there’s anything wrong, you should tell me…”

“It’s not about you. You’re doing an amazing job, Nate. We love your cooking. Even Ben does, even though he has some issues that cause him to calculate everything he eats, as you probably have noticed. It’s just a habit he learned from a former teacher and doesn’t mean he wouldn’t like the food.”

“I’m certainly glad to hear that, Master. But if it’s not about me, what is it, then, that’s troubling you?”

“Well, you know that we can always ask you what we want and it’s in your programming to do it. But you see, for us, it’s different. We’re not programmed, so we can’t just make each other do what we want. And Ben…”

Her voice breaks down to tears.

“There’s no need to bother Master Ben. Just tell me what you want.”

“I’m not talking about food.”

“Eh, what are you talking about then?”

“About sex. Do you know what it is?”

“Well, I do know… about it… enough to know when to stay in another room to not disturb my Masters. It’s what you just did, right?”

“Yes, exactly. Though now I was doing it solo. It’s much better with two people. But that would need them both to want it. And Ben…” she is interrupted by a wave of sobs as she struggles to say aloud what she has had trouble saying even inside her head. “…doesn’t want it anymore.”

She is not sure how much N8 understands, but just speaking aloud makes her sigh with relief and warms her up to go on.

“You probably remember even better than I do when we last time had sex.”

“Yes, I do. It was…”

“You don’t have to tell me exactly. It just feels so long time ago. And I’ve been trying and trying. In straightforward ways, in subtle ways, but he says he doesn’t want me to touch him. And now I’ve been going for weeks without taking any initiative myself, in hopes that it would give him time to take it at his own pace, but it’s going sooooo slowly! Today he as much as touched my breast, and that was over in like ten seconds.”

She blows her nose, takes a sip from her cup and glances at N8. She realises she has probably ventured out of its range of understanding.

“It was like… You know how much I love your jogan fruit tart?”

The oval mechanical head nods.

“His touch was like having a piece of it in my mouth but not being able to chew or swallow.”

“Oh, Master, that sounds terrible.”

Rey leans her face on her hands.

“I feel like a total failure. In case you don’t know, sex is how humans make babies, and considering the amount of babies in the galaxy after the war, other humans must be doing it all the time. And we’re not just normal humans but a dyad in the Force, two that are one. And we can’t figure this out. I feel like he… abandoned me like my parents did.”

She shudders as she hears her own words. Comparison to her parents is hardly fair for him, but she needs to get that niggling thought out of her head.

“Yes, he left me even though he promised to never do so. I mean… he’s with me here every day and he’s there for me in life and our work, but it’s almost like it makes it worse. His body is so hot, and his smell makes me so horny that I just want to suck his perfect dick until his brain comes out of it. Stars, I so freaking badly want to get laid again, so that the whole bed is moving and I can feel his cum dripping down my thighs. Do you understand?”

“Errr, not exactly.”

“Have you seen a human eat with their bare hands so that the food is all over their face and the table and they're just squirming and groaning of pleasure?”

“I love that!”

“That’s how I want to fuck him. Right now. Not wait a single kriffing day longer. My life is like somebody would torture me with a jogan fruit tart constantly under my nose but hands cuffed so that I couldn’t eat.”

She takes a break to sob, sips her infusion again and slams the cup down so that droplets fly out on the table.

“I hate Ben. I hate the teacher who left him like this. I wish he could be brought back from death just so that I could kill him a million times over. I so much want to kill something, anything right now.”

“Master, do you remember when both of you said that you never liked those plates with the turquoise outline?”

Rey stares at her droid with rounded eyes.

“Go ahead. I’ll clean up after you, before he’s back. If he asks anything, I can say that I donated them.”

Without any more hesitation, Rey springs up and to the closet where the ugly plates are piled on the top shelf. She takes the pile down on the counter and then, one by one, smashes each plate on the floor with both hands, accompanied with fierce screams. Some of them she throws at an empty wall. Some of the larger shards she picks back up with the Force and goes again to crash them smaller.

“I like this!” she bursts out half-way.

When the whole pile lays shattered all over the kitchen floor, she sits back on her chair to steady her breathing and drink. Her fury is gone and only silent tears left.

Closing her eyes and leaning her forehead on her hands, she feels N8’s mechanical hand land on her shoulder. An empathy circuit would probably make it apply the exact pattern that humans use to stroke each other for comfort. Instead, N8 lightly kneads her shoulder like it would be forming a bread roll.

The sensation turns her tears into laughter. N8 may not be programmed for this, but Rey feels sure that it is the only droid in the galaxy who is resourceful enough to use baking mechanics to comfort its Master when she most needs it. And it understands her perfectly as long as she makes the appropriate translations. It may not be a perfectly empathic droid, but it is her own N8-09 and it is unique. She leans her head on N8’s mechanical one with a soft thump.

“Thank you, it was good to talk to you. Really good, in fact.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ouch... We'll see in the next chapter if there's anything that could bring them a little closer again


	3. Shower of glitter

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "This is what the Force is for. Not for fighting and mind-tricking but for elevating people’s hearts to trust in all-conquering love.”

“Masters, I have something for you.”

The other students have already left after the afternoon lesson and only Edlanyn has stayed behind. She passes Rey something that she recognises as paper. But it is small and only has their names on it, even though it feels heavier and thicker than she would expect paper to feel in this size.

“Thank you. What is it?”

“It’s an envelope, Rey”, Ben explains. “You open it like this.”

He shows her and takes out a little card. When he reads it, his face lights up in a smile.

“What is it? What is it?” Rey tries to look at the card but only recognises a few words.

Ben turns back to Edlanyn. “So you’re getting married? Congratulations! Is it the same girl?”

Edlanyn nods with enthusiasm, her whole face radiating. “It would be an honour to our families if you would be there.”

Ben flinches. Their class is the largest group he has been amongst since his release from prison. A full wedding has a high probability of including people with rightfully heavy grudges towards the First Order and thus towards him, too. Edlanyn appears to guess his thoughts.

“Yes, you too, Master Solo. Our families already adore you after everything I've told about you. It will be on Sorgan, our homeworld, so it’s within the range of your parole. If you could let me know within a couple of weeks if you’re coming, that would be…”

“Of course we are!” Finally fully realising what is going on, Rey cuts Edlanyn off with a hug.

“That’s great, then. And there’s one more thing…” Edlanyn looks down shyly. “I love her so much… I’d like to make it very special for her. I’d want to make her ring fly over a pond, on a feather-shaped tray, white birds flying in spirals around it, surrounded by a shower of glitter. Would that be inappropriate use of the Force?”

Rey hurries to answer: “No, go ahead, make it special! Just don’t tell our Master if you ever meet his ghost.”

* * *

Talking with N8 and destroying the plates worked wonders to increase Rey’s patience for unsatiating touch. Ever since, she has kept becoming better and better at savouring the passionate kisses and the fleeting moments with Ben’s hands all over her, relaxing from the need for those to lead anywhere.

This morning, when she is again stroking his upper body between snoozes, she even notices herself that it does not turn her on so completely. She feels more of a silent adoration rather than a loud need. She has already made it through several months without touching him intimately, and something tells her that she should take advantage of her current state of mind.

Softly, she lands her palm on his crotch and subtly curls her fingers around the shape of his shaft over his pants, thumb resting against his tip. He tenses as usual, but senses something different in her hand and relaxes a notch.

“I’m not going to do anything. Can I just hold you like this?” Her voice shakes and she holds her breath while waiting for his answer.

“Yes, please, I want to try.”

His breathing turns heavy and his body trembles and sweats. His fists clench the sheets, until Rey gives him her free hand. He clings to it and breaks into tears.

She holds him all the way through them, until he eventually settles down and relaxes. Then he pulls her against his chest, kisses her hair and quietly thanks her.

When they eventually get up, he starts the day with a little fewer push-ups than normally.

* * *

“Eh, hello, I’m Ben Solo.”

He extends a clumsy hand, which the woman takes in both of her own.

“I know who you are. I’m a big fan of your work. And you must be…”

“Rey Skywalker. Congratulations! We’re very happy for you and your daughter.” Rey flashes her most radiant and sincere smile as her hand gets a similar treatment.

“And thank you again for inviting us”, Ben adds.

“Oh, it’s me who should thank you both. Edlanyn talks about you all the time nowadays. But it wasn’t always like that.”

The gaze between her gracefully wrinkled eye corners drifts to the distance, like the party around them was disappearing from her consciousness.

“When Edlie left to study with you, we were not on speaking terms. I did everything to stop her from going. I tried yelling at her, talking sense to her, telling her that she should settle down and get a normal decent job like her brother. Then one morning she was gone and didn't answer the comm. There was just a scribbled note on her nightstand saying: ‘I left’. We knew where she had gone and decided that she was not part of the family anymore.”

She takes a heavy breath and focuses her eyes on Ben and Rey again.

“Then, late last year, I got very sick. I was knocked off in bed for days. The fever made my head sluggish and void. Once I started to recover to my senses, it was like my brain returned online in a different arrangement. I saw my whole self differently. I understood that all the time I had been… afraid of her. She was like that from very early age, you know.”

They both nod. By now, they know the typical story of a Force-sensitive child.

“Moving objects without touching, talking to beings who were not there and making others do what she wanted. Never anything bad exactly. Once she convinced us to buy her a toy ship that was a bit more expensive than we could have really afforded, but otherwise only insignificant things. Still, it was enough to make the neighborhood notice and whisper, and I was embarrassed. It made me want to dim it out of her. To make her feel so small that she would lose that interest.”

“But it didn’t work. She’s an excellent student, diligent and strong with the Force”, Ben assures.

“No, it didn’t. And I’m glad about it now. It was all unconscious then, and as I realized what I had done to my own daughter, I felt horrible, just like one of those evil parents from bed-time stories. But when I saw it all, that very same day, my comm beeped and it was my Edlie! We barely had any words to each other, just cried most of the time, but we both understood and forgave. And I have a feeling it was related to something you did.”

They smile when remembering the day when blindfolded Edlanyn finally blocked all the sting beams approaching her head from the left. And they also remember how hard she had worked for it by staggering through a mess of anger, bitterness, grudge, inadequacy, sorrow and abandonment, eventually arriving at forgiveness.

“It was Edlie’s own work”, Rey says aloud.

* * *

“Awww, wasn’t that adorable”, Rey purrs as they close the hotel room door behind them. “I think even Luke would approve, seeing how almost everyone cried. This is what the Force is for. Not for fighting and mind-tricking but for elevating people’s hearts to trust in all-conquering love.”

“The entrance for the other ring was pretty awesome, too.”

“Oh yes, when they burned the twined wood from around it. I first couldn’t decide if I should be afraid of them both catching fire or if I should cry, but then I opted for crying.”

They both laugh and sway into a hug, which leads into a kiss.

“You look amazing in this dress.”

“Thanks! You still taste like that cake.”

“So do you. It was quite perfect.”

“You know what else is perfect here?” Rey backs away from him so that she can show a mysterious smirk. When Ben does not get it, she answers her own riddle: “We have a bathtub!”

Still some months ago, she would have been devastated about the thought of bathing together with Ben. She was introduced to the concept of a bathtub during their house search. Before that, it had not crossed her mind that, on some planets, water could be used that lavishly. But she learned to love it whenever they happened to have one in their hotel room, especially when all their baths ended up in sex that covered the walls, floor and ceiling in splashes.

Afterwards, she has become afraid that she could not immerse herself in that much warm water with him without her mind becoming bitterly occupied by what is not happening between them anymore. But tonight, after plenty of dry-land practice at home, she finally feels confident about just enjoying a bath with her beloved without an expectation.

Ben seems to like the thought as well, as he immediately goes to turn on the tap. Like they always used to, they do not even wait for the tub to fill before taking off their clothes and plunging in, leaning back on the opposite sides and letting the warmth of the water gradually creep up their bodies.

Being eventually neck-deep in the warmth is just the kind of heaven they remember. They chat lazily a bit more about the wedding, spending long silences just luxuriating and caressing each other’s legs and feet.

When Rey’s hand wanders higher over Ben’s hip, she sees his cock twitch through the water. As he still looks peaceful, head leaning back with closed eyes, she tentatively brushes over it with her thumb. He still shows no sign of repellence, so she covers it with her whole palm. He only slightly tenses up before settling again.

Rey keeps her hand steady for long enough to give time for any tears or shudders to appear if they will, but nothing happens, just the gradual growth of his erection under her loose grip. Very cautiously, she makes an experiment of stroking him. He smiles and lets out a longer outbreath with a subtle sound, which encourages her to continue but stick to a very light touch.

His unusual comfort reminds her about what else she is missing and may have a chance to use this opportunity to try out. She props her own legs under his hips to lift him up for better access and bends down to lick slowly up his shaft. She only does it once before pausing to ask:

“Do you want more?”

“I don’t know.”

He is back to the conflicted appearance of Kylo Ren. Rey feels something about it even through the Force: desire blended with something else, which is probably the shame he was talking about, even though it is so difficult for her to grasp. His eyes are losing focus and mind drifting somewhere. Is this a kind of moment when he is still instinctively looking for Snoke? She reaches her hand forward to cup his cheek.

“It’s me. There’s no one else here. And this is right.”

“I get it. But I don’t know what will happen. You can try.”

“Just stop me whenever you need to.”

And she lowers her hands back to his hips and uses his lightness in the water to move him up for her to plant soft kisses along his shaft. She takes him fully in her mouth bit by bit, giving him time to adjust at each step. And he still does not stop her when she loses herself into his taste diluted by the water and the feel of his texture and the underlying hardness on her tongue, between her lips and against the roof of her mouth.

What forces her to stop is when she scoops too low and sucks not only him but also water into her lungs. For a moment, all her attention goes into coughing. Once she has her lungs clear, they both burst into a laugh.

Rey rearranges herself, turning her upper body to his direction so that they can entangle their legs and she can cuddle under his arm and rest her head against his chest. For a while, she uses her hand to idly douse water up to his collarbones, until she works her way to ask:

“Would you do that to me?”

She has dreamt about it but never asked for it before. First, there were so many things to explore with him and she thought that they would have plenty of time to get to it. But when that time unexpectedly ended by them turning into roommates, she did not want to stir the already fragile situation with any new request. Even now, she is breathing shallow when waiting for his reply, afraid that she has gone too far and will turn him away again.

“Maybe… one day. But so far, I can’t imagine how I could. I once… The water’s getting cold. Should we get up?”

Rey agrees and they stagger up, let the water out, dry themselves in fragrant towels and dress up in their sleeping clothes. But once under the heavy blanket in the giant bed, Rey does not feel like sleeping.

“What was it that you were about to say? That you once… something?”

Ben looks at the ceiling and blinks slowly.

“I once imagined doing it to you. After we fought on Starkiller. I was a mess after it. The image of Han... of Dad, dying, kept haunting me, and the only way to make it disappear was to think about you. I recalled everything about how you looked like when the lightsaber flew to you and you stroke at me again and again, not afraid, not elegant, but just raw and full of power. I asked to teach you because at that moment I suddenly wanted to find some way to make you stay with me.”

Rey shudders. A that point of time, she had thought of him as thoroughly evil and only looking for a way to turn her to the dark side.

“And later I imagined how all could have been different if you had said yes, and maybe you would have thrown me down not on the snow but on my bed. I imagined exactly how you’d look like naked and how you’d taste when having my mouth full of you and your juice all over my face. Then, Snoke let me do it. He let me imagine it all and touch myself without interfering. And for a soothing moment, I thought that we were past him controlling me and I was free, now that I was adult and had done everything he asked.”

“So, what happened?”

“Right after, he flooded into my consciousness. He fed back to my mind all the images I had just created and kept repeating that it was dirty and wrong and a waste of time and I was a weak and useless apprentice because I would only follow my dick. So you see, now any thought of doing that for real brings back the same feeling.”

“Is that why you said that I don’t have to? You remember, on the Falcon, when I did it to you for the first time? Do you think everyone thinks its somehow dirty?”

“Well, maybe. Somehow I hadn’t thought you could enjoy it.”

Rey inches closer to him to whisper in his ear:

“I could suck your perfect dick until your brain comes out of it.”

Ben turns flustered and uneasy, looking away from her. But she makes him relax again by adding:

“But don’t worry. I’ll let you sleep and take your time. I know all about waiting.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Could their droid help them again? Next chapter...


	4. Unfinished baking

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Change a thing about it, apart from the broken parts, and you’ll deal with me.”

“Hello, Masters!” N8 greets enthusiastically as the front door opens.

If it only had a proper empathy circuit, it could sense from their grunted responses that their afternoon lesson has not gone the way they thought and they have been arguing about it the whole way home. But since it lacks the circuit to observe that, it sticks to its typical cheerful tone and continues chopping jogan fruit into wedges. The dough for the crust is already waiting.

Its masters stick to each their own side of the living room, the sound of the knife kissing the chopping board remaining the only sound in the quiet house. Soon, even that stops when N8 finishes cutting the wedges and starts to cut more silently through their edges to detach the peels.

It has peeled the first four wedges and is reaching for the fifth one when the knife falls from its hand. Instead of picking it up again, the mechanical hand freezes in the air. A rumbling sound comes from inside the droid.

“Nate, what is it?”

Rey is alerted. No spoken response comes out of N8, only beeps, which make them both forget about their argument and spring up to the droid. Panicking, Rey tries to gently shake it but only more rumbling and beeping results.

“What’s happening!?” she almost screams.

She opens N8’s front panel and they examine its parts. Neither of them spots anything visibly wrong in the components they are familiar with. Ben lays a hand on Rey’s shoulder to calm down her trembling.

“It has to be something with the microelectronics. Let’s take it to the droid smith. Might be nothing serious.”

“Do you think it’ll be alright?”

“Of course, darling.”

He pulls her into a hug but she cannot relax.

“Ca-can we go now?”

“Sure.”

They mount N8 on a speeder and hurry to the closest droid smith. It is not far and there is no queue, so it gets quickly under the examination. Rey cannot stop gripping Ben’s hand while they wait for a time that feels like forever, until the smith lifts her gaze from N8’s insides.

“Just a couple of short circuits in mechanics and speech generation. How old is it?”

“We got it a couple of years ago. But some of the components were older”, Ben recalls.

“Yeah, that happens all the time. I have these parts in stock so it won't take long to change them. You can pick it up tomorrow.”

“Will it be alright?” Rey asks on the verge of tears.

“Sure, it will. This is a completely routine operation.”

“Ok, thank you. We’ll come tomorrow.”

The droid smith digs back into N8 as they turn to leave. They are already in the doorway when she looks up again and stops them.

“Wait, one more thing! I notice that it doesn’t have an empathy circuit. Now that I have it open, would you like me to install one?”

Before Ben has time to even consider, Rey hurries to answer:

“No! Change a thing about it, apart from the broken parts, and you’ll deal with me.”

On the way home on the speeder, she finally starts to relax, leaning against Ben’s steady back and replaying the droid smith’s words in her mind: _This is a routine operation. This is a routine operation. This is a routine operation._

After convincing herself that they are not going to lose N8 forever, her mind has time to face the fact that they will have to survive until tomorrow without it.

“What are we going to eat?”

“It was making something before this happened, right?”

“Jogan fruit tart, but it didn’t finish it.”

“Uh-huh.”

Rey's mouth waters when she understands what he means.

To celebrate the occasion of eating unfinished jogan fruit tart as the only dinner, they gather the ingredients on their couch table and cuddle up to eat first the crust dough. It is hard to even say if it is more delicious before or after baking. They eat up the whole dough chunk by chunk with their fingers.

“Mmmmm! If only Nate would see. We have to tell it how awesome this is raw.”

Rey sways from side to side as she savours the final chunk. Then she picks up a wedge of jogan fruit and bites her teeth into it. Juice trickles out of it down her chin.

Ben does not bother taking his own. Instead, he swipes Rey’s chin with his tongue. After she is done with her next wedge, he repeats the same.

“Eat some yourself, don’t make me do all the chewing.”

Her protest is undetermined and has no effect. After letting him get away with a couple of more doses from her chin, she changes her approach. She picks up the next slice but, instead of biting it, holds it against her jaw, the peel against her skin and flesh outwards.

This he accepts and bites his own teeth into the jogan flesh, sending a trickle of juice down Rey’s neck. That draws his tongue down to clean up her skin there.

Since this is starting to feel even better than eating herself, she does not bite the next wedge either but leans back to place it at the junction of her neck and collarbones. Ben stretches the neckline of her shirt wider as he bites and licks up the spilled juice.

But he cannot reach all of it, as a little trail has strayed under her shirt. He looks at the middle of her neckline where the purple, sticky track of liquid disappears, something pulling him in with it, something else out. This time, he gives in to the first pull and strips off her shirt.

The movement of the fabric has swiped off almost all of the jogan juice that was on her skin, but he does not care even though he can only taste it faintly when snaking his tongue between her breasts. He realises he has unknowingly missed the feel of her skin here, the sensation of her whole breast in his mouth, and the loud, animal-like moans she makes when he sucks and rolls his tongue at the same time.

When he eventually lifts his head up and kisses her mouth, she comes up with something else. She reaches for a new piece of jogan, turns her whole body to face him and slouches down to lean against the armrest. The jogan wedge she holds over her pants between her legs.

He does not even hesitate before he devours the jogan flesh, letting the juice wet Rey’s hand and the fabric of her pants. She takes another wedge for him to eat the same way, and then another. And all the time, she feels how her pants are getting soaked from both sides as she watches his head move between her legs, lips delve into the jogan flesh and cheeks pucker to suck it out of the peel.

When she removes her hand to discard the peel and reach for one more wedge, Ben does not wait for it. His hands grasp the waistline of her pants and pull them off. He snatches the jogan slice from her hand and crushes it in his fist above her. Sugary sticky liquid rains down on her thighs and lower belly.

His mouth follows the trail of the juice until he cannot anymore taste it on her skin. He kisses her inner thigh once more and looks up to where she is so deep red and dripping slick and quietly waiting for him - where he wants to go despite the nagging repellence he still feels.

He cups her mound with his hand first and just presses. Already that makes her sigh with pleasure. He kisses the back of his own hand, first softly, then with rising fever, showing her what he wants to do as soon as he gets ready to take his hand away. That makes him feel new flushes of liquid under his palm, this time not from the fruit.

Ben spreads out his fingers just a hint and lets the tip of his tongue trail between them. That is enough to taste her a little. Enough to want more. Rey’s body undulates as his fingers spread wider and his lips sink between them.

Pausing his mouth around her clit and his own middle finger, he tries to slip his hand out. But it refuses to move. It stays locked in place by the voice inside him that keeps insisting that the woman he loves is dirty from here and that makes him dirty for wanting this.

After a few trials of moving his hand and failing to beat his own force that is holding it back, Rey realises what he is trying to do, and something about why it is not working.

“Please, Ben, want to feel it. This is right. This is so right. I love you.”

She keeps repeating the words with a reassuring hand on his shoulder. And bit by bit, he lets the belief in her words anchor into his mind, and focusing on it allows his hand to relax and slide out, leaving him kissing her directly on the clit.

At first, he cannot move much. She tastes like faintly sweet and floral and part of him drags himself in doubt about if this is allowed to feel this good. But it turns out that Rey loves the slow and subtle movements of his lips and tongue in her folds, and eventually her arching back and ecstatic sounds make him forget that any part of this could be anything else but perfect.

He smiles with relief into her pussy as he lets himself get lost there.

It is better than he could have dreamed of. And it brings back to him how he first imagined it, but this time in a sweet and innocent way, evoking only the best of it. That reminds him about what part of it he still wants.

He props himself up, pushes her legs to the side and switches to his back, pulling her over him.

This is not how Rey has exactly dared to imagine this, but feeling Ben’s tongue again inside her makes her catch up quickly. She finds convenient spots for her knees on either side of his head and lets gravity and his sucking lips pull all sensible thoughts out of her. Mind empty, she grinds with her hips against his mouth, and when she comes, she breaks straight into tears.

She settles down half next to him, half on him, so that she can cry in his arms all the tears of joy out.

They wake up there in the middle of the night, stiff bodies cuddled on the sofa, in a position that now feels uncomfortable. Ben’s lower legs are numb from sticking out over the armrest and Rey is cold from falling asleep naked.

They gather themselves up to sitting and sway their way to the bedroom. Rey has to keep a firm grip around Ben’s waist so that she can support a large part of his weight as he tries to walk on numb legs. Step by step, they make it to the bed under their blankets and into better sleep.

In the morning, for the first time in this house, they face a kitchen with no droid. They have never used their caf extractor themselves, but it looks like it could be intuitive. When they think they have it loaded correctly and press the extraction cycle to start, fresh caf comes out - not in the cups underneath but as a fountain towards the ceiling.

Quickly, both pick up their cups to capture as much as they can from the fountain. They only catch a little on the bottom of the cups, enough for a few sips. But it does not matter because when they taste it, it turns out to be so strong that there is no way they would drink any more than that.

After some searching, they find N8’s stash of bread and jam. Usually, it does something to make it warm and deliciously crunchy on the surface, but they have no time to figure out how to do that. The cold bread tastes more blunt, but with a bit of extra jam it is ok. They are already late when they rush out of the door to start their morning lesson.

Rey does not know if she is more nervous of N8 being unrepairable or that something about its personality would have changed in the process. But once they reach the droid smith early in the evening, it sounds and looks completely normal.

“Masters! I’ve missed you”, it chirps across the room, in a cute imitation of those droids that are actually capable of missing.

Rey and Ben enclose it in a hug between them.

“We’ve missed you, too”, Rey whispers

They pay and tip the droid smith and pack all three of them on the speeder to head back home.

When N8 rolls in through the front door, it pauses in the open area between the living room and kitchen to take in the sight: Empty dishes lay here and there. The table and floor in front of the couch are dotted with jogan peels with traces of flesh on. The couch pillows have their share of the purple juice. The caf extractor looks like it exploded. The whole kitchen, including the ceiling, is covered in caf stains. Through the bedroom doorway, its optical sensors register an unmade bed.

“How long have I been away?”

“One day”, Ben replies.

“The raw jogan fruit tart tasted excellent!” Rey hurries to fill in. “You could make it every other time raw.”

N8 gives out something that sounds like a human sigh. But in reality, it comes from its circuits that are frantically computing the optimal way to start working. Clearly, the whole house has to be cleaned and the couch pillow cases washed, but its masters have probably not eaten anything proper for the whole day it has been away. In the end, it resolves to roll to the kitchen, temporarily ignore the mess and start gathering up ingredients for kuafa soup.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That's better :)  
> We'll see where they end up in the final chapter.


	5. End of waiting

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I’ve been thinking we should paint that wall.”

It is not anyhow special morning. Just a normal day off, when Rey has already gone several times back and forth between sleep and waking in Ben’s arms. She blinks her eyes open and becomes conscious again of his warmth against her back.

When she stretches her body into a long arch, she notices that he is awake, too, as his hand lands on her side. He caresses it up and down, first over her sleeping shirt, then slipping under it. His palm feels like a warm shower on her ribs, between her shoulder blades, around her spine, on her navel, and cupping her breast. He uses his grip around it to squeeze and pull her closer while using his nose to brush her hair to the side so that he can kiss her neck.

The kisses turn more intense and his hand travels down to the elastic of her pants to ease them down. She feels a few intoxicating squeezes in her ass, then fingers sliding forward into her folds and one of them, probably his thumb, slipping inside her.

But soon the hand retracts, and she mourns for the loss before feeling something else between her legs - something that she likes to call the _perfect dick_. It is tentatively brushing through her upper thighs and labia, until Ben's hand appears again to spread her open so that it can enter and fill her.

She embraces the familiar but almost forgotten sensation of being blissfully split open and hugging his movements with her oversensitive walls. But the most thrilling is the realisation that he actually wants this, that he cannot stop his mouth from devouring her neck and his hand from clutching her lower belly to make her meet his thrusts.

Keeping his hold around her belly, he rolls her on her front, lifts her up on all fours and pushes even deeper into her, with increasing force that makes the whole bed move. He comes with the sound of a triumphant animal, and when he slips out of her, she can feel juicy trails of cum drip down her inner thighs.

“Sorry, I should have taken it more slowly”, he gasps as he throws himself back down on the bed.

“That's a very silly thing to say. Ben Solo, I want you in all possible ways - fast, slow, wild, peaceful, all the other flavours and everything in between.”

He smiles first tentatively and then, after convincing himself to believe her, lets his whole face light up and get covered in heartfelt dimples.

Time works for making Ben increasingly comfortable. Sometimes he has to stop, breath and negotiate with whatever old belief is trying to distract him, but he usually makes it back, with the help of Rey’s soothing words and touch.

They do not go back to the daily, often multiple-times-per-day routine of the beginning, but Rey notices that she does not mind. She remembers how difficult it used to be to get anything done - how long a simple discussion about a house candidate could take when it was interrupted by several orgasms. They end up with both of them content most of the time, cherishing intimate moments when those happen, while still allowing themselves plenty of attention for the rest of the world and their teaching.

Rey still dreams about repeating a 50-hour flight they once made on the Falcon without leaving the bed, only using the Force to float rations from the kitchenette when getting hungry, not bothering to shower before the very end because of getting sweaty and sticky so repeatedly. But she feels fairly confident that they will have the time to work their way to it.

The best is that whenever Ben has moments of aloofness, she knows that it is not anymore for good.

* * *

Rey puts her cup down and leans to the side to rub her cheek against Ben’s triceps. It is pleasantly bulked up from recent push-ups, but what she appreciates the most is that he has done an uncalculated number of them. She loves when he works out as he likes, without the obsession with Kylo Ren’s body.

She picks her cup back up and takes another sip of N8’s perfectly extracted caf, along with a bite of magically warm and crispy bread. She fixes her eyes on the far wall of the living room behind the couch as she listens to the sound of N8 chopping vegetables in preparation for a slow-cooking lunch.

“What are you looking at?” Ben’s finger is warm from holding a hot cup when he strokes her cheek.

“I’ve been thinking we should paint that wall.”

“Do you have a colour in mind?”

“Yes, a combination actually.”

Preparing for the worst, he asks:

“What kind of combination?”

“Burned orange and army green.”

“Like..?”

“…in that house, yes.”

“Are you looking for a fight or flirting?”

“You may decide, Sir.”

His eyes grow dark as he finishes his cup.

“Go away, Nate.”

“But Master, I haven’t finished the vegetables.”

Rey chuckles at the droid’s devotion. She knows that it can debate verbal orders, but there is something in its programming that it cannot override. She stands up, straddles Ben’s lap and starts undoing his pants with exaggerated movements. As N8’s sensors pick that up, it drops its knife on the chopping board and rolls out, saying:

“I’ll be outside if you need me.”

It does not detect anymore how Ben lifts Rey up on the kitchen counter and sets out to devour her. She is still in her worn-out sleeping pants that come off easily. He leans his hard length between her labia, wraps his arms around her and whispers:

“Go into my mind, Rey. I want to show you something.”

“But we agreed…”

“Only if it’s the last resort, yes. But now it is. There’s no way I can explain this in words.”

She has done it only twice before, once on Starkiller base and another time on Exegol, almost three years ago already. Then he looked so dead that she panicked. She could barely feel anything of him through the Force. It was a chaotic difference to how she had got used to sensing him as a bright beacon, not always light but still outshining all other beings, like he was the other half of their own binary star and all others just planets around them.

She could not understand, so she did the only thing she could think of and dove into his mind to look for answers. And she experienced a thread of life force so thin that there was not even space for pain. Ben’s mind was all one-pointed happiness for her. He was clinging to the sole thought that he had managed to save her and she would live, with no interest in what would happen to himself.

That was how she knew that if she would try to carry him out like that, she would lose him. He would simply let his broken bones and the loss of life force shed to Rey to take over, become one with the Force and trade his body for this blissful feeling. Kylo Ren had never had much drive to fight without being angry, and there was a high chance that Ben Solo was not that much different.

So Rey spat at him all the insults she could gather up at that moment. She hit him as hard as she dared, trying to avoid the worst injured spots. And like that, she got him to sit up. She continued punching with one hand as she used the other one to help him stand up. Then, yelling at him at every step, she got him to walk, leaning at least half of his weight on her.

And as one swaying and cursing bundle, they made it on the stone elevator, up on the ground and to Ben’s TIE fighter - the only available ship with two seats. But when he should have climbed to the back seat, he just looked up at it and went so limp that she could not hold him standing and they both collapsed on the ground. His eyes closed and a faint smile crept on his face as he spoke:

“I can’t make it up there. Just leave me here. Let me sleep. Go on. Live your life. I’ve ruined enough. Everything’s broken. Just kiss me once more and then leave me and I’ll be the happiest creature that ever existed.”

Rey brought her lips hovering in front of his and noticed how it made him ever so slightly perk up in the Force again. But for her, it was not enough. She did not want him happy for his last breath. She wanted him _alive_ , for decades to come. Instead of closing the gap to kiss him, she said:

“I don’t think so. A waste of time. You’re a lousy kisser.” She sat up and continued, looking down her nose at him. "I think I’ll rather go back to the base where I can kiss Finn to my heart’s content. You remember FN-2198? He’s learned so much after he defected. I’m sure he’ll kiss much better than you. In fact, I _know_ he does.”

The white lie helped, even though she was about to burst into laughter when just imagining kissing her best friend. Ben did not notice. He fought his way up to sitting, hissing through gasping breaths:

“You surprised me. I was about to die. Don’t think I wouldn’t ravish your whole pretty mouth if I just had one more chance.”

His hand was already reaching for her, but she was quicker to stand up so that he only caught a hold of her leg. Even that he lost as she hopped on the TIE.

“Well, in case you’d like one, I’ll be right here." She offered her hand down towards him. “Rise, Skywalker, move it! Get your lazy ass up here, RIGHT NOW!”

Spitting out curses, wordless grunts and wails of pain, Ben struggled up to standing and took a hold of the climbing handle of the TIE with his other hand and Rey’s extended hand with the other. He half pulled himself, half let her drag him up and then sank down on the back seat. There he closed his eyes and held his left side until the most intense pain dissolved. His body went back to limp and his mouth curved into a hint of a smile when Rey buckled him up.

She wanted nothing more than to kiss him again. And technically she owed it to him now. But he was already fading in the Force once more, and she had already seen the effect that a kiss had on him in this state. So instead, she smacked his cheek. Desperate tears blended in her voice as she yelled at him:

“Idiot, stupid Ben Solo! Don’t die on me now, not after everything. Don’t you kriffing dare to leave me like everyone else. I hate you! Leave me now and I’ll haunt your ghost like no Force ghost has ever been haunted before. And when I eventually meet you on the other side, there'll be nothing to save your ass from me. I’ll torture and kill you a million times over."

“I’m fine with that. There’s no life for me anyway in this galaxy that hates me, for all the right reasons.”

“There always is, one day at a time. Now, to start with, I’ll take us out of here and you’ll stay alive the whole flight until I’ll get medical help for you. And then you’ll probably be prosecuted for your crimes but you’ll confess everything and that will make your sentence mild. In short: You. Live. We. Figure. Kriffing. Everything. Out. Got it?”

When Ben did not answer, she smacked him again. “Got it!?”

He looked straight into her eyes and looked like he finally understood the situation from her point of view. “Got it.”

And he kept his word and stayed alive the whole way to the base. Whenever Rey would notice him dimming in the Force again, she would figure out a new insult to help him pull himself back. But she did not enter his mind again, not ever since.

Still, it comes easily to her now. There is something very familiar about tuning into him and letting the fabrics of their consciousness fuse.

Equally familiar is the way how focused his mind is on her. But this time it is not just a strand holding on to traces of life. It is a fully alive being, overflowing with love, desire and devotion, like Rey was a sun where it bathes - or not just bathes from the outside but really infuses with the light. It already feels like beyond words, and it still escalates when he feels something similar from her exposed mind and their emotions start spiralling upward, amplified by each other.

Already intoxicated by that sensation, she first sees the intention and then actually feels his cock enter her. Except that she does not only feel it herself. She also senses how exactly the squeeze of her own walls feels for him and how impossibly aroused he is because of her body, even though she has always thought about it just as normal. And they both have to laugh when she sees how equally astonished he is to see how crazy she is about him.

Like this, even orgasm feels totally different from any in Rey's memory. She can feel a first layer of it in her own body, and another one on top of it, filling the space that would be his body, even though parts of it go outside of her skin. On top of that, she feels the layer of him feeling her, and then another, as an endless spiral. They are both out of words for a long time after, but the first reasonable thought they both read from each other’s minds is the same:

_We might have made a mistake with the agreement._


End file.
